In the Court of the Yellow King Page 8

  “Whoa, Donny,” Giff said. He’d had a wife once. Many times he’d regretted their divorce, though in his case it hadn’t been his decision. “Hold on, now. There’s no reason to throw away your real life relationship to pursue a virtual relationship. Can’t you just keep doing that on the side?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t understand... Tessy’s always complaining about the time I spend in GTH. It’s getting hard to enjoy it like I should.”

  “Well, maybe you are playing it too much, from the sound of it.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Giff ignored that comment. “This Carcosan girl... is she an AI, or a player?”

  “I don’t know,” Donny said. After a thoughtful pause he added, “I guess I don’t care.”

  The next day Beau announced that he had taken the plunge and bought himself a connection to the Grand Theft Hovercar universe, too. Giff only smiled, but Donny whooped and clapped him on the shoulder. “Join the club, Beau! Now you can come to work with only three or four hours sleep, too, and a headache from listening to your wife bitch your ears bloody.”

  At Donny’s insistence, Beau finally shyly described the avatar he had customized: a much younger man bulging with muscles. “I didn’t make him too huge, though,” Beau explained, “because I want to take him to the gym, in there, and bulk him up gradually.”

  “Sounds fun!” Donny said. Then he bugged his eyes. “Hey! Guys! The three of us should meet up in GTH sometime, right? And go for some beers?”

  Giff agreed, though he thought it was funny that the three of them had never done that in real life.

  Giff stayed up too late playing the game, allowing himself only a forty-five minute nap before he was up again and showering for work. He’d thought maybe the nap, and an energy capsule washed down with black coffee, might be enough to help him slog through the day, but slouching in the shower he decided to call in sick. He sent a message to his manager, Pierre. Rather than return to bed, though, after he finished his coffee he sat down in front of his computer again, reaffixed the ultranet interface disks to the sides of his head, and delved back into the replica of Punktown.

  Today he decided to revisit the neighborhood he had been living in twenty years ago, when he was still married. He visited it often enough in the real world, so he was very familiar with it, but he was curious to see how the facsimile compared. It was a fairly well-to-do area, too (he’d had a somewhat better job back then, and his wife had also been doing well), so he could also rob some local pedestrians for decent money with which to buy more ammunition for his guns.

  He was also saving virtual money in case he wanted to put down rent on a nice apartment. He hadn’t mapped his real-life apartment. He didn’t want people getting inside it – strangers, or potentially nosy acquaintances like Donny – and seeing how tiny, dirty, and cluttered it was, maybe going through his personal belongings and discovering his love organ inching along the floor like a caterpillar.

  From his last saved point, he rode toward his destination in a powerful Warper hovercar, but in speeding along maniacally he smashed it up against other cars until its belly began to scrape the pavement as it floated along. He abandoned it, carjacked a fluorescent orange Razer hovercar instead, and rode the rest of the way in that. When he arrived, he left the once-beautiful Razer, dented and scratched, by the curb.

  He walked along the sidewalk, saying hello to passersby, waiting to see if someone would prompt him to attack them and take their money (perhaps leading ultimately to a massive standoff with forcers, which was always good fun, though it always resulted with his death and having to sign back into the game). He was restless for a woman, too. This wasn’t the best location to find a prosty, but prosties were everywhere in Punktown.

  He wondered if his ex-wife ever played this game, and if so, if she too would be nostalgically drawn back to this area. Would he even recognize her if he passed her on the street? What younger actress or singing star might she choose as an avatar? Knowing her tastes in films and music, that might be the only way to spot her. He hadn’t seen her in the flesh for over a decade.

  Up ahead, as he walked on, Giff spotted a holographic sign floating in the air in front of a building’s brick face. The sign, in glowing yellow letters, read Imperial Dynasty. He slowed his pace, his brow rumpled. Strange; he didn’t recall any such establishment from this neighborhood he knew so well. It could have sprung up only very recently, though: the map of Grand Theft Hovercar was kept up-to-date on a real-time basis.

  He stopped in front of the establishment, which had a large window facing onto the sidewalk. With a name like Imperial Dynasty, he figured it might be a Chinese restaurant. He peered through the window.

  The room beyond was full of tables, at which people were sitting, but no lights appeared to be on... so that only the people at the tables closest to the window could be seen somewhat clearly. For all he could tell from out here, the room full of figures seated at little circular tables might stretch back for miles... to infinity. Everyone’s clothing was either darkened by the gloom or black, and every white face was turned to stare back at Giff through the window. Otherwise, the figures were immobile. Might they be mannequins in some kind of shop display, and not restaurant customers?

  All those pallid faces, though vague, put Giff in mind of that derelict mutant who had spoken to him in the alley. A shudder buzzed through him, and he spun away from the window so abruptly that he almost collided with a woman who was walking briskly along the sidewalk.

  Giff watched her walk away from him. She wore a silk dress that snugly encased her slender body, black with a gold pattern of what he took to be stylized flowers, though they might have been something else. Because it reminded him of a high-collared Chinese dress, and because her short bobbed hair was so very black, and even because he had thought he was standing in front of a Chinese restaurant, he had the impression the woman might be of Asian descent... though he couldn’t see her face. The way her body moved in her tight silk dress caused him to start walking after her instantly, the darkened room of motionless figures sliding from his mind.

  She was sexy, no question, but he had the sense she wasn’t a prosty. There was an elegance about her, almost like something regal that he couldn’t put his finger on. He hastened his step but somehow couldn’t quite catch up to see her face. It didn’t seem appropriate to call out to her in Marcel Valentin’s voice, “Hey sweetness,” but he wanted to catch her attention, so instead he said politely, “Excuse me, miss?” Anything to get her to stop, turn, show him her face. It must be as beautifully, snowy white as her slim arms and legs.

  “I’m sorry, I have to hurry,” the woman said without slowing or looking around at him. “I’m going to see the play.”

  “The play?” Giff still couldn’t catch up with her strides, although she was petite so her legs weren’t long, and he was all but jogging by now.

  “You should see it, too,” she said.

  “Uh... where is it?” he asked, just to keep her talking with him.

  “It’s all over the city,” she called back to him, as she turned the corner of the street.

  The pedestrian traffic grew thick at the corner, where people were waiting for the lights to change at the crosswalk, and Giff hit a tangle of bodies. “Out of my way,” he snarled, this time in the manner of Marcel Valentin, shoving his way through them, but when he rounded the corner he found the woman in the black dress with gold designs had disappeared.

  “Well, look who decided to visit us today,” Beau remarked when Giff walked into their department the next day, twenty minutes late.

  Giff grunted, not in the mood. He’d only had two hours of sleep and was all out of energy capsules.

  “Whatever you had yesterday must be catching,” Beau went on. “Now Donny’s out sick today.”

  “Oh, really?” Giff said.

  “Yeah. But I think I know wh
at you two are really suffering: an overdose of Grand Theft Hovercar.”

  Giff grunted again.

  Beau continued, “I’m sorry I spent all that money on it, myself – I think I’m going to stop, and maybe let my son take over my account.”

  Giff had been surprised that Beau had tried the game out in the first place. “Is your wife complaining about the time you spend on it?”

  “Not really... I don’t spend too much time on it... it’s just that it’s too weird for me.”

  “Weird?”

  “Well, the last time I played this guy came running into the gym from the street, and started fighting with everyone, screaming and acting crazy. One of the other players had to kill him with a hand weight. The guy had no eyes, like someone tore them out... or maybe he did it to himself. He kept asking us if we saw the sign, or something like that. If we’d found the sign yet.”

  “You act like you haven’t lived in Punktown your whole life.”

  “Exactly. I think I’d prefer a game that got me away from all the scary stuff in this city,” Beau said.

  Now, night after night, Giff found himself obsessed with finding that beautiful woman in the black and gold dress again. The impulse was so strong, and seemed so beyond his control, that he wondered if it was all part of the game’s central storyline, trying to pull him back in.

  He repeatedly checked the area where he’d first seen her, but couldn’t find her again. He noticed that the hovering holographic sign reading Imperial Dynasty had vanished, and the room beyond the window was entirely swallowed in blackness, the people and even the tables he had seen previously now apparently all gone.

  Yet one night as he was prowling in his search for the woman in the silk dress, as his stolen car crossed a high, elevated bridge he happened to look down at the street below and spotted the luminous yellow letters that spelled out Imperial Dynasty, hovering in front of another building with a large dark window out front. Was it a chain of restaurants, then, or the same business... hopping from one location to another around the city? As restless, perhaps, as he was.

  He always entered Fukuda Bioforms through one of the Employees Only side doors, but today when he’d parked his brand new fluorescent pink Razer and walked to the entrance, he realized he didn’t have his company ID card on him. He asked the door scanner to read his face and voice, but it didn’t respond. Probably a glitch. Frustrated, he decided to try the building’s main entrance instead. It was a large structure, so as he turned away he was prepared for a bit of a walk, but he had only taken a few steps when a series of loud cracks caused him to flinch to a stop.

  He looked toward the parking lot, and saw a figure walking between the vehicles, carrying a bulky assault engine – the kind of military weapon that could fire solid projectiles, beams, shotgun pellets, even mini rockets from its various muzzles. He knew this, because he often used one himself in GTH, usually when fighting forcers or street gangs. This person had set the gun to single-action fire, solid bullets, and was pumping rounds into the parked vehicles as he maneuvered between them. Windshields erupted into crystalline sprays, black holes popping open in the vehicles’ hoods and flanks. Giff realized the man was laughing wildly as he fired.

  The man turned his head and noticed that Giff was rooted in place, staring in stunned disbelief. That was when Giff recognized it was Donny.

  “Hey, Giff!” Donny called to him. “Have you found the Yellow Sign yet? It changes the whole game, man... it changes everything!”

  Giff held up his hands as Donny started walking toward him. He wanted to whirl away and make a run for it, but was afraid to set the younger man off. “Come on, Donny... easy, guy.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Giff.” Donny kept coming. “You understand! You’re addicted, too.” Grinning, he turned the big gun around in his hands. “Hey, watch this, man... the sign wants to get inside us... you got to let it in!”

  He stopped about ten feet from Giff, raised the assault rifle so that one of its muzzles pressed against his own forehead, and pulled one of its multiple triggers.

  Giff jolted to consciousness.

  He was slumped back on the love seat that could be folded out into his bed. The stink of excrement greeted him, and he realized his pajama pants were soiled, and thoroughly soaked with urine. So was the cushion he was seated on. “Oh God,” he groaned, and in speaking discovered that his throat was as dry as a tube of cement. He stripped off his pajamas, dropped them into the trash zapper, and before stepping into the shower leaned over the sink to cup handfuls of water into his mouth. When at last he straightened, in the mirror he saw the ultranet interface disks stuck to his temples. He peeled them off.

  No wonder he couldn’t get into Fukuda Bioforms, he thought. For security purposes, of course the company wouldn’t allow its interior to be mapped for Grand Theft Hovercar. Or had that been reality, after all, and he was now immersed in the game? No... no... this reflected face was his, not Marcel Valentin’s. That was the only real way he could tell.

  He showered, then emerged to stare at his love seat in disgust. Cleaning it would be a headache, but he couldn’t afford replacing it right now.

  Time. He glanced at a clock and groaned again; he was over an hour late to work. He was afraid to talk to his manager, Pierre, so he decided to call Beau and Donny to tell them he’d be in late. But his head pounded so much from the hunger that yowled in his belly, he knew it was better to just tell them he wouldn’t be in today.

  Before calling his friends on his computer’s vidscreen, he went to put on a fresh t-shirt and sweatpants, and that was when he spotted his love organ curled on the worn carpet beside his bureau. It had blackened and shriveled in death, its taint of decomposition masked by the stench of his own waste.

  He dumped the starved love organ into the trash zapper, too, then called his department at work.

  Beau came on the screen, and immediately blurted, “God, Giff, you really had me worried! Where have you been?”

  Only an hour late and Beau was this worked up? Trying not to sound irritated, Giff told him, “I feel horrible, Beau... can you tell Pierre I need the day off?”

  “Again? Giff, I don’t know if you’re going to have a job left when you get back.”

  “What do you mean, ‘again’?”

  “This will be the fourth day in a row you’ve been out. Don’t you know that? Are you on drugs or something, Giff? Do you even know about Donny? I was beginning to think the same thing happened with you. Pierre has been calling you and calling you... we were getting ready to come out there and look in on you.”

  “Three days?” Giff croaked in his still parched voice. Then his befuddled brain backed up a few steps. “Wait... what happened to Donny?”

  “Oh God, you don’t know. Oh God, Giff...”

  “Tell me,” Giff said. Though he did know, in fact. Had seen it, in fact.

  “Donny shot himself yesterday. At home. He shot his poor wife Tessy first, and then he shot himself. He left some crazy note painted on the wall of his living room, I guess.”

  “Something about a... Yellow Sign?”

  “I don’t know, Giff; the forcers haven’t released that to the public. Why, did he say anything to you about what was going on in his head?”

  What was going into his head, Giff thought. “No,” he replied.

  “You know what I think was wrong with him? And what’s wrong with you, too? It’s that blasting game. I played it.... I know how crazy it is. Why do you think they announced they’re shutting it down?”

  “Shutting it... down?”

  “You really have been out of it, huh? Yes, Giff. Go look at the news on the net. I think that game poisoned Donny, and it’s poisoning you, and—”

  Giff ended the call abruptly, and navigated to a popular news site on the standard net. He did a search on Grand Theft Hovercar, and right away came up with a
press release from the company that had created the VR game. It was as Beau had said: effective immediately, the game was going to be made unavailable due to a virus that had somehow been introduced into it. Intentional sabotage was suspected, but was still unproven. The virus, which had not yet been pinned down, had created “unfortunate irregularities and distortions in game play.”

  “No,” Giff said aloud as he read this announcement. He was distressed almost to the point of desperation. Shut down Grand Theft Hovercar? It was like hearing his own death sentence pronounced. At the very least, like hearing himself sentenced to live the rest of his life locked in a tiny cell, all his freedom forever denied.

  He retrieved his interface disks from the corner of the bathroom sink, pasted them back on his temples, returned to his computer and tried logging on to the game.

  He was successful.

  Grand Theft Hovercar had other ideas about being shut down.

  He was spawned in the game standing on a fire escape platform, three floors up from street level, at about twilight. He recognized the neighborhood: it was the mutant slum dubbed Tin Town, which was always a good place to go in the game if you wanted to end up fighting for your avatar’s pseudo life.

  He wasn’t alone on the fire escape. Beside him, even more out of place in this neighborhood than himself, the woman in the gold-patterned black silk dress leaned against the railing looking down at a vacant lot directly below. His heart sitting up like an eager dog, Giff moved to the railing alongside her, but a curved wing of her glossy bobbed hair shielded the side of her face from his view.